Bayt ʿIṭāb ( ar, بيت عطاب) was a Palestinian Arab village located in the Jerusalem Subdistrict. The village is believed to have been inhabited since biblical times. An ancient tunnel which led to the village spring is associated with story of Samson. Both during and after its incorporation into Crusader fiefdoms in the 12th century, its population was Arab.

Sheikh Sheikh (pronounced or ; ar, شيخ ' , mostly pronounced , plural ' )—also transliterated sheekh, sheyikh, shaykh, shayk, shekh, shaik and Shaikh, shak—is an honorific title in the Arabic language. It commonly designates a chief of a ...

s from the Lahham family clan, who were associated with the Qays tribo-political faction, ruled the village during Ottoman era. In the 19th century, this clan controlled 24 villages in the vicinity. The homes were built of stone. The local farmers cultivated cereals, fruit trees and olive groves and some engaged in livestock breeding. After a military assault on Bayt ʿIṭāb by Israeli forces in October 1948, the village was depopulated and demolished. Many of the villagers had fled to refugee camps in the West Bank less than from the village. In 1950, an Israeli

moshav A moshav ( he, מוֹשָׁב, plural ', lit. ''settlement, village'') is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 an ...

Onomasticon Onomasticon may refer to: *Onomasticon (Eusebius) *Onomasticon of Amenope *Onomasticon of Joan Coromines *Onomasticon of Julius Pollux *Onomasticon of Johann Glandorp *''Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum Onomasticon may refer to: *Onomasticon (Eusebius ...

'', written in the fourth century CE.

Crusader era

In the mid-12th century, Bayt ʿIṭāb hosted an impressive ''maison forte'', or hall house, in the ancient centre of the modern village, that is thought to have served as the residence of

Johannes Gothman Johannes is a Medieval Latin form of the personal name that usually appears as "John" in English language contexts. It is a variant of the Greek and Classical Latin variants (Ιωάννης, ''Ioannes''), itself derived from the Hebrew name '' Yeh ...

, a Frankish crusader knight. The building had two stories, both vaulted; the ground floor entrance was protected by a slit-

machicolation A machicolation (french: mâchicoulis) is a floor opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement, through which stones or other material, such as boiling water, hot sand, quicklime or boiling cooking oil, could be dropped on attackers at t ...

and had stairs leading to the basement and upper floor.CHRAM, 1994
p. 342
/ref> Nonetheless, his wife was forced to sell his landholdings after he was taken prisoner by Islamic forces in 1161, in order to raise the money needed for his ransom.Riley-Smith, 2001
p. 171
/ref>Pringle, 1997
p.26
/ref> It was then acquired by and made a fief of the

Church of the Holy Sepulchre The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, hy, Սուրբ Հարության տաճար, la, Ecclesia Sancti Sepulchri, am, የቅዱስ መቃብር ቤተክርስቲያን, he, כנסיית הקבר, ar, كنيسة القيامة is a church i ...

, possibly organised by the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p
23
/ref> The Arabic name of the village appears in Latin transliteration as ''Bethaatap'' in a list recording the sale of the land holdings belonging to Gothman in 1161.Levy, 1998
p. 505
/ref> Its affiliations with the Crusader era has led some to erroneously characterize the village as "Crusader", when in fact its habitation by Arabs predates, persisted through and extended beyond this period.Benvenisti, 2002, in a chapter named "The Convenience of the Crusades"
p. 301
/ref>

Ottoman era

Edward Robinson visited the village in 1838, and described its stone houses, several of which had two storeys, as solidly built. In the center of the village were the ruins of a castle or tower. Robinson estimates, the village population was six to seven hundred people. He notes that ''Beit 'Atab'', as he transcribes it, was the chief town of the 'Arkub (Arqub) district and the Nazir (warden) of the district lived there. Robinson recounts that he was "a good-looking man" from the Lahaam clan, and that when they arrived in the village, he was sitting conversing with other

sheikh Sheikh (pronounced or ; ar, شيخ ' , mostly pronounced , plural ' )—also transliterated sheekh, sheyikh, shaykh, shayk, shekh, shaik and Shaikh, shak—is an honorific title in the Arabic language. It commonly designates a chief of a ...

s on a carpet under a fig tree. Rising to greet them, he invited them to stay for the night, but as they were in a hurry to see more of the country before the setting of the sun, and so declined his offer.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol 2, p
338
Cited in Khalidi, 1992, p. 274 In the mid-19th century, the sheikh of Bayt 'Itab was named 'Utham al-Lahham (Sheikh 'Othman al-Lahaam). He had been exiled in 1846, but had managed to escape and return. A supporter of the Qays faction, Lahham was in conflict with the Yamani faction leaders, especially the sheikh of

Abu Ghosh Abu Ghosh ( ar, أبو غوش; he, אבו גוש) is an Arab-Israeli local council in Israel, located west of Jerusalem on the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem highway. It is situated 610–720 meters above sea level. It takes its current name from the d ...

.Schölch, 1993, p. 231 In the 1850s the conflict between these two families over the control of the district of Bani Hasan dominated the area. As Meron Benvenisti writes, al-Lahham waged "a bloody war against Sheik Mustafa Abu Ghosh, whose capital and fortified seat was in the village of Suba." In 1855, Mohammad Atallah in

Bayt Nattif Bayt Nattif or Beit Nattif ( ar, بيت نتّيف, and alternatively) was a Palestinian Arab village, located some 20 kilometers (straight line distance) southwest of Jerusalem, midway on the ancient Roman road between Beit Guvrin and Jerusal ...

, a cousin of 'Utham al-Lahham, contested his rule over the region. In order to win support from

, Mohammad Atallah changed side over to the Yamani faction. This is said to have enraged 'Utham al-Lahham. He raised a fighting force and fell on

on 3 January 1855. The village lost 21 dead. According to an eyewitness description by the horrified British consul,

James Finn James Finn (1806–1872) was a British Consul in Jerusalem, in the then Ottoman Empire (1846–1863). He arrived in 1845 with his wife Elizabeth Anne Finn. Finn was a devout Christian, who belonged to the London Society for Promoting Christia ...

, their corpses were terribly mutilated.Schölch, 1993, p. 232 Meron Benvenisti notes that, "The long history of Beit ʿIṭāb and the tale of the wars of the Quays and Yaman have been recounted at length in many books, and British consul James Finn (mid-nineteenth century) left a particularly vivid description of this village and its houses, both ancient and new. But there is no mention of any of this in Israeli guidebooks, save for the routine remark, "destroyed in the War for Independence." By contrast, the guidebook makes sure to inform its readers that "it is almost certain that its Arab name, Beit ʿIṭāb, is a corruption of its Latin name, Atap, meaning a small fortress," and at the site there are "remains of ancient structures, apparently from a Crusader farm."" In February 1855, the Abu Ghosh-family came to the aid of Atallah, conquered Bayt ʿIṭāb, and imprisoned ʿUtham al-Laḥḥām in his own house. With the help of one of the younger members of the Abu Ghosh-family,

was able to negotiate a cease-fire between the Atallah and Lahham -factions in Bayt 'Itab. For three years, relative peace reigned in the area; however, the Ottoman Governor of Jerusalem,

Thurayya Pasha Ahmad Agha Fadhelaldin Agha Al-Asali Duzdar ( ar, أحمد آغا بن فضل الدين آغا العسلي دزدار) was mayor of Jerusalem and Governor of Jerusalem from 1838 to as late as 1863. In 1838 Ahmad Agha accompanied David Roberts ...

, and his policy of consolidating Ottoman control over the local districts, step by step, led to the last rebellion of the sheikhs in 1858–59. By the fall of 1859, when 'Utham al-Lahham was ninety years old, both he and Mohammad Atallah were deported to Cyprus by Thurayya Pasha. The rest of the Laḥḥām family was resettled in Ramla.Schölch, 1993, pp.232-3, party based on Finn,
p.193
ff. When French explorer Victor Guérin visited the village in 1863, "he found that the Sheikh's house, with the adjoining houses, is built upon the site of an old fort, some vaults of which remain, and seemed to him older than the Crusades. The people say that there is a subterranean passage from the castle to the spring at the bottom of the hill. They also told him that the village of '' Eshua'' (4 miles to the north-west) was formerly called Ashtual, and that between the villages of

Sur'ah Sar'a ( ar, صرعة), was a Palestinian Arab village located 25 km west of Jerusalem, depopulated in the 1948 war. The site lies on a hill, at an elevation of about above sea-level. History Bronze Age to Roman period Sar'a might have ...

and Eshua is a waly consecrated to the ''Sheikh Gherib'', and known also as the Kabr Shamshun, Tomb of Samson."

Socin Sozzini, Sozini, Socini or Socin is an Italian noble family originally from Siena in Tuscany, where the family were noted as bankers and merchants, jurists and humanist scholars. The family has been described as "the most famous legal dynasty of t ...

found from an official Ottoman village list from about 1870 that Bayt 'Itab had a population of 241, with a total of 89 houses, though the population count included men, only.

Hartmann Hartmann is a Germanic and Ashkenazi Jewish surname. It is less frequently used as a male given name. The name originates from the Germanic word, "hart", which translates in English to "hardy", "hard", or "tough" and "Mann", a suffix meaning "man", ...

found that Bayt 'Itab had 100 houses. In the late 19th century, Bayt ʿIṭāb was described as a village built on stone, perched on a rocky knoll that rose 60 to 100 feet above the surrounding hilly ridge. Its population in 1875 was approximately 700, all

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

. Olive trees were cultivated on terraces to the north of the village. A large cavern (18 feet wide and 6 feet high) ran beneath the houses. Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, pp
22
24. Also quoted in Khalidi, 1992, p. 275 In 1896 the population of ''Bet 'atab'' was estimated to be about 543 persons.

British Mandatory period

In the

1922 census of Palestine The 1922 census of Palestine was the first census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine, on 23 October 1922. The reported population was 757,182, including the military and persons of foreign nationality. The divisi ...

conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Bayt 'Itab had a population of 504 residents; all

s,Barron, 1923, Table VII, Sub-district of Ramleh, p
21
/ref> increasing in the 1931 census to 606, still all Muslims, in a total of 187 houses.Mills, 1932, p
19
/ref> It was in the sub-district of Ramle, but due to the rearrangement of district boundaries it was later in the sub-district of Jerusalem.Kark and Oren-Nordheim, 2001
p. 192
/ref> The original layout of Bayt ʿIṭāb was circular, but newer construction to the southwest (towards

Sufla Sufla ( ar, سفلى) was a Palestinian Arab village in the Jerusalem Subdistrict. It was depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War on October 19, 1948, by the Sixth Battalion of the Harel Brigade under Operation Ha-Har. It was located 18. ...

), gave the village an arc-shape. Most houses were built of stone. Agriculture was the main source of income. The village owned extensive areas on the coastal plain that were planted with grain. During the

British Mandate in Palestine The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918. The manda ...

, some of this land was expropriated to make a large, government-owned woodland. In the 1945 statistics, it had a population of 540 Muslims, with 5,447 dunums of land. Of this, a total of 1,400 dunams were used for cereals, 665 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards, while 14 dunams were built-up (urban) Arab land. 116 dunums were planted with olive trees, and the villagers also engaged in livestock breeding. File:Ras Abu Ammar 1945.jpg, Bayt 'Itab, Mandate survey, 1:20,000 File:Allar 1945.jpg, Bayt 'Itab, 1945, 1:20,000

1948 War and aftermath

The village was depopulated between 19 and 24 October 1948, after the Harel Brigade captured the village as part of Operation Ha-Har. This operation was complementary to Operation Yoav, a simultaneous offensive on the southern front. Most of the village population fled southwards, towards Bethlehem and Hebron.Morris, 2004, p.
466
/ref> Many

refugees A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

from Bayt 'Itab, and other Palestinian villages clustered together on the western slope of the Judean mountains, ended up in

Dheisheh refugee camp Dheisheh ( ar, مخيم الدهيشة) is a Palestinian refugee camp located just south of Bethlehem in the West Bank. Dheisheh was established in 1949 on 0.31 square kilometers of land leased from the Jordanian government.West Bank, roughly from their former homes.Rosenfeld, 2004
p. 322
/ref> One IDF account says that when the Harel Brigade approached the village at night, they already found the village deserted, but proceeded to destroy its houses. In 1950, the Israeli village of

Nes Harim Nes Harim ( he, נֵס הָרִים, ''lit.'' Banner of the Mountains) is a moshav in central Israel. Located in the Judean foothills near Beit Shemesh and eight kilometers west of Jerusalem,Walid Khalidi found the site strewn with rubble and the remains of a Crusader fortress. He noted two cemeteries that lay east and west of the village, and the fact that some of the surrounding land was cultivated by Israeli farmers. In 2002, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority established a 130-dunam national park in the area, known as Horvat 'Itab. Remains at the site include a Crusader fortress, vaults, remnants of a wall and towers, tunnels, a columbarium and an olive press. A conservation project was undertaken to stabilize the vaulted building utilizing traditional technology.

Geography

Bayt ʿIṭāb was located south southwest of Jerusalem, on a high mountain above sea level, overlooking some lower mountains peaks below.Khalidi, 1992, p. 274 A Roman road ran along a narrow ridge to the south of the village which also passed by Solomon's Pools.Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p
38
/ref> A low cliff to the east of the village was known as Arâk el-Jemâl'' ("the cliff, cavern or buttress of the camels").Palmer, 1881, p
284
/ref> Southeast of the village on the main road was the chief village spring known as ''ʿAin Beit ʿAṭāb'' ( ar, عين بيت عطاب) or ''ʿAin Haud''.Palmer, 1881, p
278
/ref> Below this spring to the northwest, was a pool known as ''Birket 'Atab'' with its own spring, ''`Ain el-Birkeh''.Palmer, 1881, p
279
/ref> Another spring nearby was known as Ain el Khanzierh'' ("the spring of the sow").Palmer, 1881, p
280
/ref> Connecting the village to the chief spring was a rock tunnel said to be "of great antiquity," the entrance of which was known only to those well acquainted with the site.Lias, 2009
pp. 165-166
/ref> This cavern or tunnel, known in Arabic as ''Mgharat Bīr el-Hasuta'', ("Cave of the Well of Hasuta") is "evidently artificial," and was hewn into the rock.Conder and Kitchener, 1883, SWP III, p
137
/ref> Some 250 feet long, it runs in a south-south-west direction from the village emerging as a vertical shaft (6 ft x 5 ft x 10 ft deep) about 60 yards away from the spring that supplied the village with water. The average height of the tunnel is about 5 to 8 feet with a width of about 18 feet. There were two entrances to it from the village, one in the west, and the other at the center, the latter being closed at one author's time of writing in the 19th century.

Biblical identification

In 1879, Lieutenant C. R. Conder, of the

Palestine Exploration Fund The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, and is the oldest known organization in the world created specifically for the study ...

(PEF), thought that the place Bayt ʿIṭāb should be identified with the biblical site known as "Rock of Etam"
Judges 15:11
, by way of a corruption of its name, and which, according to Conder, was not a town at all, but "a strong rock."Conder, 1878, p
117
/ref>

John William McGarvey John William (J. W.) McGarvey (March 1, 1829 – October 6, 1911) was a minister, author, and religious educator in the American Restoration Movement. He was particularly associated with the College of the Bible in Lexington, Kentucky (today Lexi ...

(1881) quotes Conder on the linguistic evidence: "The substitution of B for M is so common (as in Tibneh for Timnah) that the name Atab may very properly represent the Hebrew Etam (''eagle's nest''); and there are other indications as to the identity of the site."McGarvey, 2002, pp
246-247
/ref> ''Survey of Western Palestine'' (1883), notes that the name of the "curious cave" at Bayt ʿIṭāb in Arabic is ''Bir el-Has Utah''. Unable to find a meaning for the word in Arabic, they find it corresponds to the Hebrew word ''Hasutah'', " ..which is translated 'a place of refuge.' Thus the name seems to indicate that this place has been used from a very early time as a lurking or hiding place, as we gather it to have been in the time of Samson."

McGarvey McGarvey is an Irish surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Ayelish McGarvey, journalist covering the religious right * Frank McGarvey (born 1956), Scottish football player * John William McGarvey (1829–1911), minister and religiou ...

also relays Conder's belief that the cavern within the rock formation was "the real hiding place" of Samson after his destruction of the

Philistine The Philistines ( he, פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Pəlīštīm; Koine Greek (LXX): Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: ''Phulistieím'') were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, when ...

's grains. Henry B. Tristram (1897) writes of Bayt 'Itab that it crowned "a remarkable rocky knoll," which he states is, "probably, '' the Rock Etam''." Noting that an ancient tunnel ran down from the village eastward through the rock to the chief spring, he speculates that this would have made a good hiding place for Samson when according to

biblical The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

tradition, he "went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam" ( Book of Judges, xv. 8).Tristram, 1897, pp
66-67
/ref>

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * (Unhman al-Latham description
p230
*(Bayt 'Itab
p.193
ff.) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ( pp
326

338
340) * * * (p
266
Beitatap(?), p
279
Betatap) * *Schölch, Alexander (1986): ''Palästina im Umbruch 1856-1882.'' Wiesbaden and Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. * * *

External links

Bayt 'Itab
Zochrot *Survey of Western Palestine, Map 17
IAA
Wikimedia commons
Bayt 'Itab in Antiquity
Archaeological Survey of Israel

from the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center
Bayt 'Itab
Palestine Family
Visiting the village erased from all but a family's memory
National Catholic Reporter {{Crusader Sites in Israel 1948 Arab–Israeli War District of Jerusalem Arab villages depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Throne villages Order of the Holy Sepulchre